


This is the Wrong Story

by Hecate



Category: Eye Candy (TV)
Genre: M/M, Terrorism, Unhealthy Relationships, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-14 05:53:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11201790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: It didn't start with a dead girl.





	This is the Wrong Story

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrine/gifts).



“Charlie,” Tommy says, and Bubonic hates every single time Tommy calls him that. He has stopped being Charlie when _she_ died. And Tommy doesn't get to pick up the name that was her's , he doesn't get to use it; this name she said when he came home, when she was angry, when she pressed him against the wall and kissed the lines of his face and body and sank to the floor.

When she told him that she loved him.

“Don't call me that,” he says just like he has done every time before, and Tommy gives the very same answer.

“It's your name.”

Bubonic shakes his head.

“I'm not calling you Bubonic,” Tommy goes on, “even though you're a goddamn plague”

A lifetime ago, he would have laughed at the comment. But these days, with the Cyber Unit controlling his life, he doesn't. Instead, he looks back to the computer screen, taking in the code.

“Charlie,” Tommy repeats. “New case.”

Eloquent as ever.

~***~

He doesn't remember the first time he saw Olivia. Doesn't remember because seeing her was lines of code, a website going down and being reborn with the face Olivia gave it. Seeing her was glorious and exhilarating.

But she wasn't the only one dancing through systems, tearing down walls. She wasn't the only one; and seeing her for the first time is lost to all the other security breaches he witnessed, all the other attacks that could have been hers, might have been hers.

He should have asked her about it. But he didn't.

~***~

The case reeks of terrorism, of fanatics wanting to shape the country and the world in their image. It's enough to get the Feds involved, enough to get headquarters crowded with new faces, with people that look at Bubonic with disdain.

He happily smiles back at them. 

“He shouldn't be on this case,” one of them says. 

He's the one in charge, Bubonic thinks, the one ordering the Feds around. Bubonic doesn't bother learning their names. 

“He is on this case,” Katherine answers, unmoved and unimpressed. 

It's almost fun watching her.

“He is a terrorist,” the agent says.

“Yes,” Tommy replies, and Bubonic hadn't even noticed that Tommy walked up to them, stands next to him now. “He is. We're aware of that. But he is our terrorist. And he is on this case.”

There's a finality in it, in Tommy's words and Katharine's face, it's sharp and hard and dangerous. Bubonic thinks he might like it.

~***~

He didn't realize that Olivia was gone for two days. He was too focused on the company he was targeting, too lost in code and coffee. His attack cost the company thousands of dollars.

Sometimes he thinks that his attack cost him the woman he loved.

~***~

Tommy still goes to IRL. It's because of Lindy, Bubonic thinks, the only connection Tommy still has to the woman, and he wonders if Tommy loved her, would have loved her. Tommy still goes to IRL and he hangs out with Sophia and Connor and George. Maybe he's a replacement, Bubonic thinks, bringing up their numbers so they remain four.

Bubonic goes to IRL to piss Tommy off.

“Don't you have somewhere else to be?” he asks.

Bubonic shrugs. “It's a nice place to hang out, don't you think? The music, the drinks.” A smirk then, showing teeth. “The people.”

Tommy rolls his eyes at him.

Bubonic buys him a beer.

~***~

It didn't start with a dead girl.

It started with Olivia alive and Charlie keeping an eye on the Cyber Crimes Unit, keeping them at length. They weren't good enough to catch him but good enough to be trouble, and Charlie hated surprises when he wasn't the one behind them.

It started with Olivia alive and Bubonic seeing Tommy for the first time, his image crystal clear on Charlie's screen. He looked all shiny and new back then, like a toy the system produced for itself. And all Charlie wanted to do was to break the packaging and play with him. 

Maybe Olivia would still be alive if he hadn't done exactly that.

~***~

“I know these people,” Bubonic says, the suspicion he had turning into reality. “They've been working up to this for a long time.”

“I'm not surprised,” the lead agent says, “They are pretty much your people.”

Bubonic doesn't reply, swallows down his anger. They don't understand, they haven't lost Olivia, haven't seen the wolrd go on as if it didn't matter that she wasn't in it anymore.

He loads the website, the whole thing still looking bare and as if it hardly made it's way out of the 90s. “They got a forum here,” he explains. “It's all bad ciphers.” An arrogant smile just to rile the agent up. “Even your guys should be able to break this.”

To the agent's left, Tommy is quick to hide his grin. 

Bubonic sees it anyway.

~***~

After they caught him, Tommy wanted him in prison. Katherine wanted him in front of their computer screens.

“He's not Lindy,” Tommy said. “He's not one of the good guys.”

Katherine smiled. “No, he isn't. But he could be useful.”

“How? We shouldn't let him near the important stuff. He could hurt people with that. He has hurt people.” 

A shrug, and Katherine looked at Bubonic briefly. “Then we make sure he won't do that. He is a patriot, isn't he?”

There was amusement in her words, a warning, too, and Bubonic thought back to all the defaced websites he had left in his wake, the messages he had thrown all over them. 

Tommy snorted. “He's not a patriot. He's an an asshole with a keyboard that uses his girlfriend as an excuse to murder people.”

Katherine shrugged. “And all too common affliction.”

But Tommy wasn't done, not yet.

“Olivia,” Tommy said, and he pulled her name out of his bag of tricks, pulled it out of the past. “Olivia wouldn't have been impressed with all the shit he pulled.”

Bubonic almost punched him for that, his hand a fist. But he didn't, forced himself to put a smile on his face, mild and even. Tommy glared at him, and Bubonic asked himself if he ever felt sorry for Olivia's death, if he thought back to it and promised himself to be better from now on.

Tommy finally looked at him then. “There's therapy for shit like that.”

~***~

The group is targeting a government building. No surprise there. People like that always seem to go after government buildings.

“We get the people out, we find the bomb, we disarm it,” the lead agent says. “Simple.”

Tommy frowns. “You saw the chatter. It won't be simple. They start off a cyper attack, too. We need to stop that as well.”

A shrug, and Bubonic thinks that the agent doesn't understand the group they're after at all. Yes, they're dumb enough to connect one attack with another just to make a point. Yes, they're bad at cyber attacks. The second, they're clearly aware of. 

The set-up isn't theirs, they bought it from someone. And it's already there, in the building, just like the bomb, because the Feds and the cops and Bubonic were too slow to figure the story out. A virus in the system, almost untraceable from the outside, the firewalls surprisingly good, the virus even better. He wants to know who made it.

“Somebody needs to kill the virus from the inside,” he says.

Katherine smiles at him. “Somebody will.”

~***~

“This is a bad idea,” Tommy said, staring at the fourth beer Bubonic bought him. “This is a very bad idea and I don't know why I'm going with this.”

Bubonic grinned. “Because it's Saturday, the week was bad and the beer is good?”

Tommy looked at him, and there was something on his face that Bubonic couldn't quite decipher. “Yeah, that would be it.”

He watched as Tommy finished the beer, stared at the fragile line of his throat as he swallowed. For a brief time after Olivia had died, he had imagined himself strangling Tommy, making him feel what Olivia did in her cell alone with herself and the possibility of death. He thought back to that and wanted Tommy alive.

“Drinking alone sucks, though,” Tommy said. “It always ends tragic.” And Tommy ordered two beer, put one of them in front of Bubonic when they arrived.

And it reminded him of Olivia again, the beer and the words. She had hated drinking on her own, always got two beer, two glasses of wine. “I'm not some tragic comic heroine,” she used to say. “Hacking the government during the day, drinking myself to death at night.” A grin then, carefree, and an order. “Drink with me.” And he had always done so.

“Drink,” Tommy said, and there was a lull in his voice, alcohol and exhaustion. “I'm not pathetic enough to do this on my own.”

Bubonic took the beer, raised it in a toast to Tommy, to Olivia. And drank.

~***~

They suit up, black kevlar and tech, and Bubonic wishes for someone to be there, someone he could admit to that this is frighting, that he isn't used to guns and bullets, that it's all happening too fast. But there are only the Feds, there is Katherine watching, and there is Tommy gearing up beside him.

He doesn't know what to do with all these straps, doesn't understand half of the shit he's supposed to wear. He should probably ask somebody. But he won't. It's just like a puzzle. He'll solve it. 

“You're doing it wrong,” Tommy points out, voice calm, almost amused, and Bubonic hates him a little bit. But then Tommy gets into his space as if it was easy, as if he was allowed there, and he fixes the mess Bubonic made out of his gear with well-practised hands. “There. All good now.”

~***~

Tommy kissed him at the club, pulled him close and pressed bitter lips against Bubonic's mouth. He probably shouldn't have let him. Olivia was dead, after all, and Tommy as good as killed her.

 _Bubonic_ killed her. 

She was dead, and Tommy kissed him.

He wanted to hate him for it.

Still, Tommy's mouth was a possibility, a promise, and it had been so long since Bubonic had something like that. Olivia had always been a sure thing, easy and true, and he never cared about anyone after her. 

“I don't like you,” Tommy told him conversationally between biting his lip and licking into his mouth. “You're a horrible person.”

Bubonic took Tommy home with him.

~***~

It's a Monday afternoon, and a building comes down on them.

~***~

Tommy didn't feel like Olivia at all, didn't feel like anyone Bubonic had been with. He was rough hands and a hard body, he was a mouth gone slack and hips bucking up to meet him.

“You're the worst,” Tommy declared, and he started to giggle.

“You're drunk,” Bubonic replied, and he should put an end to this. Because Tommy really was drunk, was grinning at him lazily like it was just normal for him to stretch out beneath Bubonic, to bare his throat as if that was safe to do with him. 

But Bubonic was still mad about the world and what he had lost, he was still bitter. So he pushed Tommy down and took what he was offered – a sigh and a smile, warm skin and the bent of a body. He took it all and for a moment he thought that it could be enough.

~***~

The noise doesn't stop for hours, it seems, and it breaks the world around Bubonic, tears away the walls and the ground, pulls him under. When it ends, he's buried under what is left from the room, he's alone with dust and debris.

He can't breathe.

He fights for space, pushing at the pieces of the broken building, stone and metal and plastic. He cuts his hand on something but doesn't stop, can't stop, because the world has become too small and he's the only one in it.

He doesn't hear the voice for ages, only hears his own breathing and the sound of the building still dying around him, walls like old bones grinding against each other. When he finally does, the relief is a shock, it hits him hard, his heart giving up a beat before falling back into a hard rhythm.

It's Tommy.

“Hey!” Bubonic hears, “Who's there?”

He wants to shout an answer but there's dust in his throat and his answer is a weak whisper, timid and useless. He coughs, fights for his voice, and tries again. “Tommy?”

“Charlie!” 

And it's this name again, this hated name, but he answers anyway. “Anyone else?”

“Not yet,” Tommy replies and he sounds so calm, so collected. It almost scares Bubonic. “You okay?”

Bubonic snorts, laughs, and he thinks it might be shock,might be hysteria. “A house collapsed on me.”

A pause, and it's scary, this absence of contact. Then, Tommy speaks again, and there's a promise in his voice. “Everything will be okay.”

~***~

Tommy had almost caught him once. Bubonic had been bored that week, curious, too, and he let himself be sloppy just to see what would happen.

Tommy had found him.

He hadn't seen Bubonic, of course, but he had walked into the old broken down building Bubonic had spent some of his time in, just one of the hackers using the system they set up there. He had arrested a few people, confiscated tech while Bubonic got away.

It bad been the first time Bubonic saw him in the life away from computer screens, saw flesh instead of pixels, heard his voice without layers of tech between them. It had been nice.

He never told Olivia about it.

~***~

“You shouldn't be here,” Tommy says, and it's getting harder to hear him through the rubble and exhaustion. “We could have taken one of our nerds. Or borrowed one from the Feds.”

Bubonic snorts. “I'm the best.”

Laughter, half-bitter. “You're an asshole. And a potentially dead asshole at that.”

Silence for a moment, and the little place Bubonic has for himself beneath the rubble seems to shrink again.

“Tommy?” he asks, and Charlie hates the fear in his voice. “You still there?”

“Yeah,” Tommy answers. “I'm still here.”

~***~

Tommy wasn't there when he woke up.

It was hardly a surprise. The night had been a car crash, loneliness and anger colliding at 100 miles per hour. No one wanted to be there for the aftermath.

He peeled himself out of the bed, walked to the bathroom slowly, carefully. Felt Tommy all over himself, saw him moments later in the mirror, everything they did fingerprinted all over his skin.

He looked strangely alive.

~***~

“I didn't watch the news after the accidents,” Bubonic says, and he hasn't admitted that to anyone before, not even to himself. But it's easy in the dark, the dust and rubble resting around him like lifeless bodies, every tiny move a ghost. It's easy because everything else is hard – living in the dark, waiting for rescue, surviving through the silence when neither of them speaks.

“I watched it the whole time,” Tommy answers, and Bubonic knew that. “It felt like I had to. Because I didn't stop you.” 

An admission of guilt, but it's the wrong one, and Bubonic has no absolution for a useless confession. “Did it help?” he asks instead, and he knows the answer.

“No,” and it's such a simple word, such a world-ending line in the sand. Like, _is she at home_ or _is she alive_ and so many other things that seem to find a good home in the wreckage they both are stuck in.

“Charlie?” Tommy asks. “Did it help?”

And he wants to laugh about this, about this game of repetition, because Tommy knows the answer, has to know the answer. “No.”

He wishes he could see Tommy's face. 

He wishes Olivia and all the people he killed wouldn't have died for him, for revenge, for nothing.

It's all a bit useless, really.

“She shouldn't have had her shoelaces,” Tommy says quietly, and a part of Bubonic, of Charlie, breaks all over again. “I don't know why she did.” 

Bitterness in Tommy's voice and bitterness in Bubonic's heart, and Charlie thinks that this might be the only apology he will ever get, these few words in the dark. He doesn't think that it will be enough.

~***~

“He is pretty,” Olivia had said, her eyes on the screen.

Bubonic thinks he had smiled at her words, had nodded. “He is pretty.”

“But a cop,” a poke against his shoulder, playful but with a warning in it. “You can never know with cops. They look all shiny and new, and then it's alcoholic mothers and abusive fathers beneath it all.”

He had laughed at her, had shrugged it off. “I can deal with the drama.”

A raised eyebrow. “Sure you can. But I don't need it. The drama, I mean.”

“Not even a teeny weensy bit?” 

A smirk on his face, a questioning tilt to his head, and she had laughed, had tousled his hair with familiar fingers. “Okay, a teensy weensy bit.”

~***~

They find them after hours, clever men and their clever machinery, and they dig them out slowly and carefully. He sees Tommy briefly when they put him into an ambulance, sees blood and bruises, and for the oddest moment he wants to reach out for him.

He wakes in the hospital. It's lonely.

Katherine visits him once, gives him the details of the case she wants to give him and leaves him to the sound of the machines surrounding him and the sick colors and lights of the hospital. He dreams of leaving.

When he wakes up, Tommy is sitting in the chair next to his bed, watching him. He looks back at him for a long time.

“Just needed to see that you're still alive,” Tommy finally says.

Bubonic wonders if he thinks that this might be an explanation for anything.

“Happy with what you see?” he asks.

Tommy shrugs. “I never wanted you dead.”

It's not really an answer. But it has to do.

“Charlie?” Tommy asks.

Bubonic gives him a look. Grimaces when it aggravates the bruises on his face.

Tommy exhales. Corrects himself. “Bubonic.” A deep breath, another exhale, and it's unsettling, this wait not for rescue but for Tommy to speak.

Tommy doesn't look at Bubonic when he finally says: “Do you think you would still be with her? If we never brought her in?”

It's a horrible question, terrifying and bleak and Bubonic hates that the answer is not a simple yes, is not the promise of forever he would have given Olivia months and months ago. He looks away, gives Tommy the barest of shrugs. “Maybe.”

Tommy reaches out then, reaches for Bubonic's hand. “I'm sorry you never got to find out.”

~***~

There had been a piece of paper on the kitchen table. He had found it when he noticed that Olivia was gone.

_Went to get pizza. See you in a bit._

He still has it.

~***~

It's a Monday morning, and he's back at work. Tommy is there, too, still a bit pale just like Bubonic himself, still with a trace of bruises all over his skin. He walks over to Bubonic when he sees him, Yaeger following him.

“Hey, B, new case.”

~***~

“Bird 1: This is the wrong story.  
Bird 2: All stories are the wrong story when you are impatient.” 

― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes 


End file.
